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| - The wife and I celebrated my birthday tonight at the Tornado Room. Overall, very good, but a bit inconsistent and questionable when it came to value.
Atmosphere-- Loud and dark. I liked it, but I could see this being a turn-off for others.
Drinks- Excellent martinis and gimlets.
Bread-- Fantastic.
Appetizers-- very disappointing. We split frog legs and escargot. Both left a lot to be desired. The frog legs were extremely bland-- both the batter and the meat itself seemed like they could have used more seasoning. Not good. Escargot was ok but certainly nothing to write home about. I really liked the escargot at Nadia's when it was still open. These were really unremarkable. I managed to push one of them into the shell and didn't even expend the effort to get it back out. Wouldn't eat this again.
Salad and Soup-- My wife had the spring mix with balsamic vinaigrette. She said it was very good. I loved the French onion soup.
Steaks-- Excellent. Wife had the 8 oz filet, which she really liked. I had the tenderloin, which was also very good. I liked the idea of the onion ring on top, but didn't love the onion ring itself-- as someone else said, it was almost doughnut like-- encrusted in a thick batter rather than a nice crispy coating. I didn't love it, though the wife enjoyed it quite a bit.. I went for the hash browns, just because I saw them mentioned in so many reviews. They were nothing special. I would order a baked potato if I had to do it over again. In any case, the meat had wonderful flavors, but was quite pricey.
Service- very good. No complaints. Unobtrusive and competent.
Overall, we both really enjoyed the meal, but for $160 (before tip) I think I could find better in Madison. If we did it again, we'd skip the appetizers and probably be much more satisfied.
Finally, one complaint-- do you really need to charge $1.50 extra for french onion soup (instead of the soup du jour)? Given the price of this place, this felt like I was being nickel and dimed.
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